Friday, November 26, 2004

It looks like the Bede v Barry blog has taken off rapidly enough! Let's hope we can all keep it civil in the heat of debate.

One of the stars in the Anglican firmament is Tom Wright, or NT Wright with his academic hat on. He has a web site devoted to him which is well worth a look. Recently, Wright was in the papers saying that the Church of England were being foolish selling off all its historical palaces and vicarages. He got a right old walloping from some people but I thought he was absolutely right. We sell our history off at our peril and doing it for short term gain and as a political gesture is just stupid. Even as a Catholic, I don't begrudge Anglican Bishops and Priests a nice suite of rooms in a historic building even if they did steel them all off us in the Reformation!

Less positively, the Telegraph reports a Mormon who is being harassed by a Christian preacher being forced to go to court to restrain him. This is precisely the wrong way to go about evangelisation. People who do not want to hear will not listen so pissing them off is totally counter productive. Evangelism is about being there to act as God's instrument when people are looking for Him. That is what makes the Alpha Course such as success and most doorstopping a waste of time. I hope this evangelical preacher will consider what he is doing and how his behavior is reflecting badly on the whole Christian community.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Having been brought up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses I can agree that door-to-door preaching is a waste. A sociologist did a study and discovered that the JWs must expend around 1 million man-hours of door-to-door work to make one convert.

Welcome to Quodlibeta

The Latin word Quodlibeta means "whatever you like" and refers to the special occasions at medieval universities when the students (or clerks as they were known) could test their masters by asking any question they fancied. This blog is primarily concerned with religion, science, history and their interface. But like the medieval clerks, we reserve the right to post on anything we want.

I am a historian of a very middling and amateurish sort. Having taken a Masters in Modern History at the University of St Andrews (2004), I completed a law conversion course at Nottingham Law School and embarked upon what has been an exciting career in legal technology. My chief interests are in Twentieth Century History, Colonial America, Historiography and, most recently, the History of Science. I also write a satirical blog at The Diary of Humphrey Clarke. I hope my contributions to Quodlibeta capture something of the pleasure I get from trawling my dusty collection of second hand history books.

Jim S

I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Master's degrees in Philosophy and Theology. I'm a generalist, my areas of expertise being epistemology, logic, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and science and religion. I did my philosophical studies in Continental Europe, and currently reside in the Pacific Northwest. I also write the Agent Intellect blog. In my mid-20s I decided to refute Christianity to set my conscience at ease. Two subjects I turned to in particular were science and philosophy. I accidentally argued myself into it.